steve austria column

When Dave Hobson (R-Springfield), Uncle Dave to his friends, left office, he anointed Steve Austria (R-Beavercreek) as his successor. Conventional wisdom says that a first term congressman, like a young child, should be seen and not heard. Dave Hobson knew this and served his time in the house well. Unfortunately, Mr. Austria hardly waited long enough for Uncle Dave to get his fishing pole out of storage before showed the world the wisdom of keeping quiet.
In a Labor Day column of 2008, Austria plagiarized part of the column from the Department of Labor’s web page and also the Wikipedia web entry for Labor Day. Austria’s camp admitted the gaffe and offered that they had merely omitted a citation. Try that with your English 101 Professor.
Then Mr. Austria showed that he was not only an unwilling to abide by the rules that others must abide by, he also rewrote history. In February of 2009 in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Austria said:
“When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression,” Austria said. “He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That’s just history.”
He gained the enmity of the entire country, sans Pat Buckley, for getting it wrong. Not only was he wrong, but this is OUR representative to congress and the world. He was reiterating a fact that John McCain got wrong in the campaign and tried to make it his own, even though both were as wrong as they could be. Mr. Austria said that he had been misquoted.
During his campaign for congress, Mr. Austria accused his opponent, Sharen Neuhardt (D- Yellow Springs), of harboring an illegal alien. Neuhardt had taken a Rwandan refugee (Ishema Umuhoza) into her home. Umuhoza sought political asylum from the genocide in Rwanda and Neuhardt and her husband, both attorneys, were helping Umuhoza with his case. Umuhoza was in the country legally. Mr. Austria’s attempt to use the plight of a Rwandan refugee for personal political gain is not only vile; it is also below the office in which he serves.
Steve Austria represents one of the most distressed districts in the nation. In a move that probably gave Uncle Dave heartburn, Mr. Austria refused any earmarks for two years in a row. Someone needs to tell Mr. Austria that federal funds make a difference to the economy of a distressed district. The purpose of such funds is to spark economic growth and development. Mr. Austria shows that he represents himself with the same self-serving display of ignorance with which he misrepresents history.
The jobless rate of the Seventh District is over ten percent. At least one out of ten people that he was elected to represent are unemployed. Many more are getting by, paycheck to paycheck. There is little left over for a candy bar, let alone health insurance. Yet, Mr. Austria held the party line and voted against the Health Reform Bill. Perhaps someone should remind him that he represents the Seventh District and not John Boehner.
Steve Austria has sponsored 3 bills (395 out of 440) and co-sponsored 2 (410 out of 440), none of which has been made into law. Mr. Austria, and the Seventh District, would have been better served if he would have spent his time more productively and taken a history class.